I just finished watching "A Tale of Two Hamsters" on YouTube. It is an episode that I had never seen until now.
There are a few other Partridge Family episodes that I don't think I ever saw, but until I see them, I have to say that "A Tale Of Two Hamsters" is the strangest episode of PF I ever seen at least for certain reasons.

It is a surprising plot too because it actually gives Chris and Tracy far more dialogue than most other episodes. In fact, it may even equal "Home Is Where The Heart Was" which was an episode that focused on an adventure of Chris' and Tracy's instead of Danny's.
(Actually in "HOme is Where the Heart Was" Chris' and Tracy's running away from home seems to be a vehicle for showig how Shirley feels guillty for being too strict withher youngest children as well as showing how Rubin is always the fall guy when Shirley's kids do anything, but that could be another thread ).

But it seemed to me that it was one of those TV episodes that somehow went under the radar even though it showed a real live hamster giving birth. Back in the 70s that was not the kind of thing you saw on a sitcom. It just influenced me to post this discussion.

I will have to post on the "Funniest" PF episode and the "Saddest" etc.

Anyone else?

I remember the hamster episode but it's been a few years since I've seen it. I don't think a hamster birth is particularly alarming or against the censors, but yeah, it wasn't the sort of thing you usually see on sitcoms.

Maybe not the "saddest", but one of the more serious scenes was at the end of the season 2 Christmas episode.

Another thing about "A Tale Of Two Hamsters" is if you pay enough attention, you will notice something.
There are scenes in which Danny, or Chris hands a hamster to their mother because they are trying to make her sympathetic to the hamsters since they are cute and this way she is not likely to tell the kids to get rid of them.
There is a scene in which Mrs Partridge's hand is stroking a hamster while Danny (or Chris) holds the hamster.
What I notice is that the hand stroking the hamster does not look like Shirley Jones' hand and in fact looks like the hand of a younger female. It coul be a teenage female's hand. In another scene Shirley Partridge is supposed to be holding a hamster that one of her younger sons handed to her but Shirley's hands are actually obscured by the frame of a hamster cage and only in a closeup of "Shirley's " hands do you see her holding the hamster and again it does not look like Shirley Jones' hands.
I get the feeling that behind the scenes, Shirley Jones did not want to hold the hamsters and "hand models" were used. Brian Forster and Danny Bonaduce were shown actually holding hamsters. Not "Tracy" or "Lori" or "Keith."

Speaking of "Home is Where the Heart Was", I thought that episode was strange, sad and more than a little disturbing. I mean the whole idea of telling little kids that it's okay for them to run away and then letting them go out on there own is ludicrous. I mean what if something happened to them, they could get run over by traffic or even abducted. No parent in their right mind would take a risk like that today with kids that are so young.

Speaking of "Home is Where the Heart Was", I thought that episode was strange, sad and more than a little disturbing. I mean the whole idea of telling little kids that it's okay for them to run away and then letting them go out on there own is ludicrous. I mean what if something happened to them, they could get run over by traffic or even abducted. No parent in their right mind would take a risk like that today with kids that are so young.

Well the entire premise of the show was that the Partridge family live in a safe neighborhood and there are no serious problems with crime and that Shirley really knew that the kids would go next door to Rubin's or to the neighbors. Also Chris and Tracy did not go out on their own for the very first time ever when they ran away. They apparently had gone out to play with friends or go to the store or walk to school on their own many times before. They were of an age in which they had already learned to safely cross the street. It is not as if they had no idea of how to cross the street. Also they could get run over just by playing outside without having had run away. It just was not a factor of the story. For that matter it was not safe to let Lori go out on dates even if she was 16 to 18 years of age. And also according to the plot, Keith volunteered to keep an eye on Tracy and Chris from a distance after they walked out the door. It was a reverse-psychology method that Shirley was using on the youngest kids. Of course she said that Keith and Lori did the same thing when they were Chris and Tracy's age.
Come to think of it, (though you are definitely right if you consider that Shirley was telling her kids that it is OK with her if they run away and the kids , at their age, could still grow up feeling rejected and misunderstood by their mother and even carry it into adulthood as a terrible experience even if they eventually decided go come back home) I think it was far more odd and a poor decision that in "The Red Woodloe Story" Tracy was left alone in a room with a guitar-playing stranger that the family met while stopping in a small town. Of course the plot was not that kind of plot and the focus was on "Red Woodloe" being a simple man and good songwriter and musician who preferred to play music in a small church than become famous .

But if there were going to be depictions of attempted child abduction or molestation the show would have been like "Diff'rent Strokes" when "Arnold" found himself at the home of a pedophile, or like "Good Times" when "Penny" escaped being taken by a stranger, or even like "Family " when "Buddy" fought off a man who grabbed her.
Also it really is not that kidnappings and child molestation (etc) did not exist back then in the 70s. (I so often hear people say that "Now-a-days" this or that and "What happened to the good ol' days?" etc., but actually even with all the bad things that happen today, things were overall worse in older times. A lot of people who grew up in the 60s or 50s or 40s or 30s (etc) have said in their old age that during their time, child abuse and molestation and domestic abuse was just not talked about . But mainly, that is a different discussion).

But yes this thread is about episodes you find strange or whatever.

I also think that "Dora Dora Dora" was strange in that it depicted "Dora" as a stereotypical dumb blond with good looks but who was so dim-witted and does not know that she has no singing talent and at the end of the episode, Rubin has "Dora" put on "Hot pants" and sing in front of several dozen military men who whistle at her and cat call her and "Dora" has no idea that she is being cat-called and thinks they like her singing.

But also it is odd that Rubin arranged for The Partridge Family to perform for a bunch of male soldiers because what would grown men in the military find appealing about the songs of The Partridge Family?

I'm watching the PF for the first time in a long, long time so I have only recently seen season 1.

The episode where the Partridges go to a jail to sing. The prisoners seemed harmless, but I find it hard to believe that small children would be going to a prison to sing.

Maybe not the "saddest", but one of the more serious scenes was at the end of the season 2 Christmas episode.

An interesting thing about that episode is it may be the only time that you hear the family's actual voices when they are singing (when they turn to the camera and sing Me-e-e-e-e-e-ery Christmas!)